The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories
- Автор: Adams Cleve F., Babcock Dwight V.
- Год: 2010
- Язык: английский
- Год: A Vintage Crime/Black Lizard
- ISBN: 978-0-307-45543-7
- Жанр: Криминальные детективы
Электронная книга - «The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories». Краткое содержание книги:
Black Mask was the apotheosis of noir. It was the magazine where the first hardboiled detective story, which was written by Carroll John Daly appeared. It was the slum in which such American literary titans like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler got their start, and it was the home of stories with titles like “Murder Is Bad Luck,” “Ten Carets of Lead,” and “Drop Dead Twice.” Collected here is best of the best, the hardest of the hardboiled, and the darkest of the dark of America’s finest crime fiction. This masterpiece collection represents a high watermark of America’s underbelly. Crime writing gets no better than this.
“Here’s your man. He ran smack into me in the dark. He tried to fight so I tapped him one and put him to sleep.”
“That’s good,” I said. “He’s a killer and he was getting away. Who are you?”
The automatic in his hand had a dull black gleam. “The name is Daly. I’m a private investigator. You say this guy’s a killer?”
“Yeah.” A light had dawned. “You’re a Swinnerton dick.”
“How did you know?”
“I just guessed.” I jerked my chin down at the kid. “It’s lucky you stopped him. He’s the guy you want. He used that shiv on Rufus Moore.”
“Well, I’ll be damned.” The man’s tone was hard. He turned and looked down at the still figure on the lawn. The kid was lying flat on his back with his face turned up to the stars, but right now he couldn’t see them. His face looked relaxed and young and handsome. Staring down at him, the dick let his gun drop to his side and he swore with a brief and bitter harshness, muttered: “If I’d known that for sure I’d have really put the slug to the lousy—. He must be Baby-face Blythe.”
“Baby-face Blythe?” I said.
He looked at me. He had a lean, haggard face. He nodded. “Rufe said the girl was with someone and he thought the guy was Baby-face Blythe. He’s wanted in Chi on a manslaughter charge. Or he was — until tonight. Now, California can have him for the murder of Rufe. He’s Baby-face Blythe, all right, the dirty son!”
I knew then that most of what I’d guessed before must be right. Blythe had recognized Moore and had to kill him if he wanted to stay free, whether he could marry the girl and her fortune or not.
“How did you get here?” I asked.
Daly said, “I just came from Kline’s office. Rufe and me were working together trying to locate Hildegarde Ingraham. He’d traced her here from Chicago, got a line on Blythe and was following him, hoping he’d lead him to the girl. Blythe spent some time with Kline and Art Vogelsang, and so when I heard Rufe had been knifed, I knew who’d done it and went to Kline’s office, looking for him. I found Vogelsang and Kline out on the floor and I shook ’em into admitting that Blythe had been there. They were sore at him and gave me this address.”
“When thieves fall out...” I breathed and looked up at the porch. The light had come on and all the others had come out of the house, were standing there, staring. A car was coming fast along the street, its headlights rushing toward us. From the porch, the girl we’d just rescued said in a voice brittle with a touch of hysteria:
“So — he was a crook and a chiseler all the time! He tried to deceive me, the lousy heel.” Her tone was scathing, contemptuous, in spite of its shrillness.
We turned to look at the car as its brakes squealed and it slewed to a stop before the house. Art Vogelsang dived out from behind the wheel, came dashing over, hammering words:
“Hey, don’t forget we get cut in on that reward! Don’t forget.”
He was blustering, coming up to me and the Swinnerton dick, with fat Kline waddling along behind. I told him:
“You’ll be damn lucky if you get off without being stuck with a kidnaping rap.”
“Nuts to that.” He gazed down coldly at the man on the lawn. “So you got him. We’re going to testify against Blythe, so we’ll be able to make a deal with the D.A. — don’t worry about that. Where’s the girl?”
I nodded toward the porch. “Right there.”
Vogelsang started for her, and she shrank behind Louise and Buck Madden.
“Wait a minute,” Daly’s voice clipped out.
Vogelsang stopped and looked back.
“Who’s that?” the dick asked, nodding toward the porch where the girl was trying to hide herself.
“That’s Hildegarde Ingraham, the gal you’re after,” I said.
For the first time, Daly smiled — a brief ironic twist of his lips. He pulled a folded newspaper from his topcoat pocket, snapped it open and passed it to me. It was an early morning edition, off the presses less than an hour.
“Read that,” he said, jabbing with one finger at a column on the front page.
By tilting the paper at just the right angle so that light from the porch hit it, I could make out the print. A head read:
I blinked and swallowed, feeling like a suddenly bursted balloon.
“What is it, Beek?” Mac croaked in my ear.
“We’ve been double-crossed, pal,” I told him weakly. “We don’t get any reward. This is the wrong gal.”
“Give me that!” Vogelsang snapped, and grabbed the paper out of my hands.
“Well, starch my diapers!” Mac said in a dazed tone. “Pardon me, I think I’ll go out and get measured for a straitjacket.”
He wandered away across the grass, mumbling to himself. I marched to the porch and up the steps, reached for the doll-faced gal with the dyed blond hair, jerked her out into the open.
“You’re not Hildegarde Ingraham — so who are you?”
“Me?” She blinked her eyes rapidly, looking up at me with an expression of injured innocence. “Why, I’m just Daisy May Huggins. Don’t you remember, I told you? Miss Ingraham hired me in Reno to impersonate her and lead the detectives she thought were on her trail away. I met that heel Blythe and he let me think he was Johnny Foster, so I just sort of played him along for the good time that was in it, when all this happened. I... gee, I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry!” I said, and felt my jaw. “To think I took a beating and risked my neck to rescue someone who turns out to be a ringer! So I get left holding the sack again. Somebody kick me. I’ll bend over.”
A big hand slapped me on the back, and Buck Madden growled with true sympathy: “Gee, mister, dat’s tough. I’m sorry I busted ya one. I apologize.”
“Forget it,” I told him. “I made it even, didn’t I — and you and your sister had it tough enough without all this.”
The girl smiled at me tremulously, almost hopefully. Coming up to the porch, Daly, the Swinnerton dick, said:
“She had us fooled too. She led Rufe and me on a wild-goose chase” — his voice went harsh — “that got him killed. But anyway, you helped catch the killer and that’s the way things break sometimes.”
“Uh-huh,” I breathed resignedly, and looked out across the lawn, trying to forget about the reward that I’d thought was in the bag.
Daly had handcuffed Blythe, who was still dead to the world. Vogelsang and fat Kline had slunk away, back to their car, and as I looked it started up, wheeled around in a U-turn and went away very slowly. Little Mac was sitting on the curb holding his head in his hands. I sighed.
I said, “O.K. I’ll testify against Blythe. With the girl, that will be enough. But you’ve got to agree to keep the Maddens out of it. They’ve gone through enough.”
Daly nodded. “If you say so. All I’m interested in is to see that Blythe gets the death penalty.”
The sudden relief on Louise Madden’s face and her smile of thanks were almost enough to pay me for what I’d been through. I began to feel better.
“Well, that’s settled then,” I said. “But I still wish somebody would kick me.”
“I’d rather kiss you,” she said.
The Key
Cleve F. Adams
Cleve F(ranklin) Adams (1895–1949) was born in Chicago and had a variety of jobs, including copper miner, art director for films, life insurance executive, and detective, all of which helped provide background details for his fiction.